The Texas Senate on Monday unanimously passed a bill that would provide $5,000 annual pay raises for full-time classroom teachers and librarians, at a cost of $4 billion over the next two years.
Authored by the Senate’s lead budget writer Jane Nelson, R-Flower Mound, Senate Bill 3 has been a priority of Republican Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick since he announced it at January’s inauguration. Republican Gov. Greg Abbott declared teacher pay an emergency item at his State of the State speech last month, allowing lawmakers to move more quickly to get related bills through the legislative process.
SB 3 is the first bill addressing an emergency item to be passed out of either chamber. Every single member of the Senate signed onto the bill as co-author.
“We know that teachers are dipping into their own personal funds to pay for classroom supplies. Our teachers are struggling financially,” said Nelson, laying out the bill Monday. “The one thing we need to do first and foremost is to recognize the need to uplift our whole teaching profession.”
She successfully proposed an amendment to SB 3 that would add librarians to the group of educators who would receive the raise, adding $53 million to the cost of the bill.
“Librarians are teachers. … I didn’t realize that we as a state require our librarians to have spent two years in the classroom,” she said.
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